1. Field of Invention
This invention relates to a method and apparatus for electronic acquisition and maintenance of goods and services via the Internet. More particularly, the present invention relates to a method and apparatus for customer acquisition and maintenance of goods and services from a plurality of service providers networked to an order facilitation service.
2. Background of the Invention
Many people recognize the benefits of “one-stop shopping”, such as may be found at a convenience store or shopping mall. The benefits may include reduced travel and improved ease of comparison. Merchants that offer one-stop shopping may consequently provide enhanced customer satisfaction and acquire more customers relative to merchants that do not offer one-stop shopping. Despite the recognized benefits of one-stop shopping, there exist circumstances where it is not offered. One such circumstance is services for new tenants.
Tenants of various types of properties, whether business or residential, whether multi-business, multi-family, single-business or single-family, from time to time, relocate or move from one property to another. Such relocations may involve worldwide moves, interstate moves, intrastate moves or local moves. Regardless of the geographical bounds of the move, upon relocating tenants frequently engage in a substantial effort to acquire utility services such as electricity and telephone services. The foregoing effort is further increased by the fact that tenants must also disconnect services and utilities at their previous address. Tenants must also contact many financial institutions, such as banks, credit card issuers and investment institutions, to inform them regarding their change of address. Typically, tenants contact each service provider individually to arrange for acquisition of services. Generally, this effort involves numerous telephone calls with substantial wait times and lengthy interviews with representatives of each service provider. Furthermore, many service providers are unavailable during evenings, weekends and holidays.
There has been very limited “automated” help available to relocating tenants. Some companies offer a service whereby tenants can register all of their credit cards with such companies. When a tenant moves, he or she contacts the company with whom the tenant is registered, and the company will contact all card issuers of the tenant and inform them of the tenant's change of address. While such a service provides some assistance to a relocating tenant, it is limited to address changes and furthermore, it is limited to a particular type of service provider, namely credit card issuers or financial institutions. There are also some online services, such as move.com, that provide limited assistance. Typically, the extent of the assistance involves providing a link to the service provider's Internet web site or sending a very basic communication, such as email, to the service provider to inform them the tenant has moved or that the tenant needs a particular utility. At that point, each service provider makes contact with the tenant, which generally, takes the form of traditional contact via a telephone call to the tenant. Similarly, tenants routinely acquire various goods and services that vary with the property type. For example, a business tenant usually needs office-supply on a regular basis and a residential tenant may need dry cleaning services. Regardless of the product or service needed, tenants frequently need easy access to such products and services. Typically, tenants contact each service provider individually to arrange for acquisition of the goods and services. Furthermore, there is no easy way to shop and compare such goods and services and be able to automatically and immediately place orders with the selected service provider, all from one common place. Tenants may have to contact numerous service providers individually, take notes, compare them later and finally call back the selected provider and place an order. While some online services enable comparison of products and services, such online merchants do not provide integration of the acquisition process in the manner and with the efficiencies of the present invention.
The above-described prior art methods and systems for acquisition and maintenance of goods and services by property tenants are inefficient. Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a method and system which provides the benefits of one stop shopping in a uniform, integrated structure that eliminates inefficiencies of the prior art methods.